The War in the Ukraine

zhangjim said:

Many Chinese military commentators have come to the unanimous conclusion that the Russians seem to intend to turn the war into a long war of attrition at a lower cost.

But I don't think the long war of attrition is a clever way to do it. It is just the price paid for the wrong and confused strategy.

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It IS the wrong strategy. The proper way to finish this is the mobilize about 2.5 million, have 800k in combat, 700k in support, 700k in industrial production and 300k as reserve for anything else. This lets you finish in about 1.5-2 years.

But this is compensatory in the end. It should have been 1.5 million around April, then you can do 6-700k combat, 500k in support and the rest in support or production. If they had done that they probably could have finished before or middle of next year.

Russia "low-cost" strategy is flawed, Ukrainian production is nonexistent in Ukraine itself. So unless Russians can reach those places it is a terrible strategy. A state at war, even a low intensity one is punished greatly for trying to "outproduce" ones that are fundamentally at peace. It is simply much better to push more effort and try to conclude the combat phase and move to the consolidation phase.

But the Russians, either through unwillingness or incompetence refuse to increase combat numbers to acceptable levels, the long-term costs to this will be significant.

To the thesis that Russia can produce ALL the components needed for the Lancet drone:

If it could produce all components, there wouldn't be dozens of types of chips from texas instruments and other companies in cr, eagle, etc. Yes, they go through a grey area. But we must not import anything just because every change of an electronic module requires the full cycle of reissuing, from physical interfacing problems to rewriting of software, experiments and tests. That's time, reliability, etc. Many think sanctions reduce the ability to produce, I think otherwise: compared to pre-war yes, but with the development of grey circuits the output will increase, but not by leaps and bounds.

For a HE charge as well as a cumulative charge just distance is critical, the energy of the impactor roughly falls exponentially. For a shock core the distance is not an obstacle, but it needs to be aimed very accurately and shaped in time, which dramatically complicates the launch vehicle. Recently they showed a lancet hit on a Ukrainian 9k33m3 (wasp akm) sheltered in a light shed with a slate roof and its photo afterwards, at least it wasn't on fire, and it looks intact. It was tracked down by a long scout, the strike was made on the car park. And a lot of strikes are carried out on car parks, as the running time of barrage munitions is limited, launching them into the search area in flocks with further finding targets, as originally planned, is costly because of the shortage. That is, they hit scouted stationary targets to be sure. And this is where quick-mounted defensive shelters come in handy. And they can be made of radio-transparent materials and equipped with hinged/sliding roof to enable combat operations from the ground.

RedMetalSeadramon said:

It IS the wrong strategy. The proper way to finish this is the mobilize about 2.5 million, have 800k in combat, 700k in support, 700k in industrial production and 300k as reserve for anything else. This lets you finish in about 1.5-2 years.

But this is compensatory in the end. It should have been 1.5 million around April, then you can do 6-700k combat, 500k in support and the rest in support or production. If they had done that they probably could have finished before or middle of next year.

Russia "low-cost" strategy is flawed, Ukrainian production is nonexistent in Ukraine itself. So unless Russians can reach those places it is a terrible strategy. A state at war, even a low intensity one is punished greatly for trying to "outproduce" ones that are fundamentally at peace. It is simply much better to push more effort and try to conclude the combat phase and move to the consolidation phase.

But the Russians, either through unwillingness or incompetence refuse to increase combat numbers to acceptable levels, the long-term costs to this will be significant.

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There was no political support for anything of that scale in Russia. Which is why it was never attempted.

At this point, it is dubious if Russia would even be able to supply and equip an army of that size. It will take them quite some time to reach that capacity.

A video of executed Russian POWs has shown up. They are recorded alive while surrendering on the floor, a loud noise happens(with claims one of the Russian soldiers didn't surrender) and then drone footage is show of the soldiers shot dead where they were lying on the floor.

Also pictures of tied and beaten civilians in Kherson.

What's left of the OSA struck by a Lancet drone a few days ago

What's left of an Ukranian T-72M1

tabu said:

To the thesis that Russia can produce ALL the components needed for the Lancet drone:

If it could produce all components, there wouldn't be dozens of types of chips from texas instruments and other companies in cr, eagle, etc. Yes, they go through a grey area. But we must not import anything just because every change of an electronic module requires the full cycle of reissuing, from physical interfacing problems to rewriting of software, experiments and tests. That's time, reliability, etc. Many think sanctions reduce the ability to produce, I think otherwise: compared to pre-war yes, but with the development of grey circuits the output will increase, but not by leaps and bounds.

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Any semiconductors Russia will produce for those drones would be way more expensive than getting something off the shelf. If you do small production runs of semiconductors and keep changing what you produce your yields typically go down. Then there is the fact Russia has older 200mm wafers factories and needs to import most of the raw materials, like semiconductor wafers and photoresist, and they are sanctioned out of most suppliers. As is Russian semiconductor production capacity is maxed out right now with a lot of it being used for civilian purposes. Russia will just use common off the shelf chips for the drones and that is that. For example the sensors. Russia produces its own thermal sensors so they quite likely could make their own camera sensors if they wanted to. But why bother when you can easily smuggle a couple thousands of those quite easily. Even if you could not buy the sensors standalone, you can just buy thousands of el cheapo webcams and remove the sensors for example.

With regards to things like Texas Instruments DSPs. Russia has its own clones of that. 1967VC1T, 1910VM1T, 1901VC1T. So the TI chips could be swapped out. But it is likely way cheaper to use the mass manufactured TI ones.

KUB drone attacking infantry?

RedMetalSeadramon said:

It IS the wrong strategy. The proper way to finish this is the mobilize about 2.5 million, have 800k in combat, 700k in support, 700k in industrial production and 300k as reserve for anything else. This lets you finish in about 1.5-2 years.

But this is compensatory in the end. It should have been 1.5 million around April, then you can do 6-700k combat, 500k in support and the rest in support or production. If they had done that they probably could have finished before or middle of next year.

Russia "low-cost" strategy is flawed, Ukrainian production is nonexistent in Ukraine itself. So unless Russians can reach those places it is a terrible strategy. A state at war, even a low intensity one is punished greatly for trying to "outproduce" ones that are fundamentally at peace. It is simply much better to push more effort and try to conclude the combat phase and move to the consolidation phase.

But the Russians, either through unwillingness or incompetence refuse to increase combat numbers to acceptable levels, the long-term costs to this will be significant.

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you are correct, the right way to do it was what you said, in other words the powell doctrine.

as for people who say there is no political support to do that, that is a flawed argument because then dont go into war if you are not prepared to go all the way. look at china, waiting decades on taiwan because it knows it had to prepare for the worst case scenario.

i think russia's current strategy lies in a few things it hopes to transpire in the near future. one was a democrat loss in the midterm, it kinda didnt happen but i think GOP retaking the house still counts for something. another one is the failure of ukraine's infrastructure, this is happening, but there is no guarantee that it will engender the desired effect which is a loss of organization and support in ukraine for the war. third one is a global recession to cripple the west's ability to support ukraine. in the longer term i think russia could be hoping for a rightward swing in the western political landscape, whether in the US in 2024 or throughout europe at various times. of course concurrently to all this they need to ramp up their own war production. all of this takes time, which means in the meantime they need to reduce their own tactical vulnerabilities, meaning things like giving up kherson.

Allegedly an USV attack on Novorossiysk, doesn't seem to have hit anything important though.

Rybar confirming attacked but no damage.

tankphobia said:

Allegedly an USV attack on Novorossiysk, doesn't seem to have hit anything important though.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1593657952224813058

Rybar confirming attacked but no damage.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1593629018032521217

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So the attack failed to do any damage, but wait didn't Ukraine promise not to attack Russian harbors anymore in exchange for Russia allowing Ukraine exports to continue from Odessa? So Ukraine broke it's promise a second time? NO WAY... NO WAY.
So will the Russians now finaly use military force to stop Ukraine's grain exports?

obj 705A said:

So Ukraine broke it's promise a second time? NO WAY... NO WAY

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It is a tradition since they failed to abide to Minsk 1 and 2, leading to this mess, just like they backtracked on Motor Sich and so on.


Images of Vodyane. There are images of what seems to be a mobile command center of a tactical level



The remains of two Ukranian T-72's near Kherson.